Esa-Pekka Salonen: I like this idea of identification with the local t...

I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

groups musician real

I always had, deep down, a slight aversion toward the purely cerebral in music.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

cerebral deep-down aversion

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

suspects

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

transition jumping ideas

When an artist works today or whenever, it's not about creating immortal masterpieces, because that's the one thing we don't decide ourselves.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

creating artist today

I've learned a lot from the masters of orchestration, like Ravel and Stravinsky.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

ravel ive-learned masters

The Northern idea of form is more of a process. The various units of the form overlap. You can't tell where some things stop and new things start. This is typical of Sibelius.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

typical form ideas

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

east america people

There is such a suspicion in today's world of people who do more than one thing, who aren't specialized.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

today people world

I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

imagine done firsts

It would be very tempting to say that why paint because we have Michelangelo, we have Leonardo [Da Vinci], we have all these guys. Why waste your time, because most likely you're not going to be on that level anyway.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

levels guy would-be

If we always thought like that, why would we study physics, why would we think of cosmology, why would we do any kind of research? Because we know already so much that there is no one person who can contain all that information.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

information research thinking

Sometimes you spend nine months, 10 months, a year writing a piece that you will hear two years later or something like that, and you never see anybody. It's a very different sort of metabolic.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

writing two years

I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

composing would-be thinking

There's so much energy exchange [in conduction], so you get back a lot, of course, but you also have to give a lot. It's kind of high-energy thing.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

kind energy giving

The philharmonic became such a journey and adventure in my life, and a deeply satisfying thing.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

satisfying journey adventure

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

conducting composing cutting

I feel that this is my artistic home, and I'm very happy to be a California artist together with many others who are not from here originally but who decided to make this the center of their activities. There's something about that that I find very inspiring and satisfying.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

california artist home

Coming from a sort of very rigid European type of training to this culture which is just a little more open - a lot more open, and kind of curious, and asking different sorts of questions.Because the problem for me was that the European modernist movement in the '70s was all about right or wrong. Some things were right and you were dealing with the truth, as it were, and then some things were wrong and therefore not allowed.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

training asking culture

I think truth as an idea should be left to the philosophers and perhaps religious leaders and politicians, and professional people who deal with that idea.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

religious ideas thinking

I like this idea of identification with the local team. I think it's great. That's what an orchestra should be. It's an orchestra for its hometown, and it serves the people.